If I Could
by thundercow
Summary: But I can't. — Satoshi, Mayaka. AU, if they were too scared to change.


**notes - **today just felt like the perfect day to write something sad? not that i'm sad or anything, but it felt right, sorry for all the sudden uploading haha, I'm quite productive with drabbles comparative to actual length fics. spoilers for episode 21. AU, where nothing works out because there are things we cannot say even though there are things we still do. Satoshi and Mayaka might be the kind of people who will fall into that if they miss that one critical moment their relationship.

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**if i could**

**1.** That Valentine's Day, Satoshi apologises to Mayaka over the phone and the sleeting snow. It's cold. He doesn't ask her out, doesn't tell her he likes her, Houtarou's pep talk doing nothing now that he's alone and staring at her name on the touch screen and hearing her voice, shaking and exhausted. He's prepared for the worst outburst ever, Mayaka's usual temper tripled or quadrupled at the least.

But Mayaka doesn't shout in anger or frustration. There's a dead silence over the line, and then, a quiet "alright". Defeated and tired. It hurts him more than anything else, and that he's the cause of it makes the snow colder.

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**2.** He kisses her on Graduation Day and the blame is all on him. He's the worst kind of person because all he does is take take take whatever her wants when it's convenient, from not just Mayaka, but even Houtarou. He gives back nothing to either of them. Giving them something means giving meaning and giving emotional attachments and giving obsessions he can't afford to get obsessed over even though he thinks about them day in and day out.

Mayaka still looks at him with the same eyes of the last six years and he wants to ask her "Why don't you change?" but then he catches his reflection in her eyes and thinks that he's not allowed the right to that question.

It's a good thing Mayaka's hand jolts to her mouth and she runs away, and the back of the school's auditorium is lifeless now that all the students have left. Satoshi had been prepared to do the same. She's just faster.

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**3.** They are twenty-one the next time he lets himself do something he knows will make both of them regret it in the end. He's a sadist and Mayaka's a masochist. Or maybe it's the other way around. They could be perfectly twisted together, but the keyword is 'could'.

The bar is quiet and intimate and Houtarou leaves early to pick Chitanda up from classes and it's just them in the booth and the hand she rests on the tabletop is still small and clenched and pretty. He kisses her twice and Mayaka kisses him once and that's three things against his favour. The alcohol is their flawless scapegoat and even though it's the middle of summer, Satoshi feels cold all over again as she says goodbye to him at her doorstep.

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**4.** Mayaka brings a bottle of sake to his apartment three years later, carrying it delicately in her arms. He stores it in the cupboard and doesn't take it out for the entire night. Somehow, in a cruel inevitable way that he's grown tired of but can't ever grow out of, they still end up hunched over the sofa and her stomach is pale and soft and her cheeks, when red and flushed, are beautiful, and her arms are still giving and giving even when they're wrapping around his back and pulling and Satoshi freezes just before he can unclip her bra and he storms out of his own apartment

and comes back one hour later after walking around the neighbourhood. The door is locked and the key is hidden under the doormat and the apartment is neat and tidy and it's easy to pretend that nothing ever happened.

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**5.**

"I should have said something on Valentine's Day," he says. They're both thirty and lonely and bitter. Satoshi can't call Chitanda Chitanda now because she's Eru and Houtarou is going to be a father in four months. But even then, Mayaka's still looking at him with those eyes he can't let himself fall head over heels for.

"You didn't," Mayaka reminds him.

'I can't', he thinks, and slips his hand out of hers.


End file.
